Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of collaborative computing and more particularly to project management in a collaborative computing environment.
Description of the Related Art
Collaborative computing refers to the use by two or more end users of a computing application in order to achieve a common goal. Initially envisioned as a document sharing technology among members of a small workgroup in the corporate environment, collaborative computing has grown today to include a wide variety of technologies arranged strategically to facilitate collaboration among members of a workgroup whether co-located or geographically dispersed. No longer merely restricted to document sharing, the modern collaborative environment can include document libraries, chat rooms, video conferencing, application sharing, and discussion forums to name only a few. Notably, today's collaborative computing environments can be both synchronous or asynchronous.
A collaborative computing application enjoys substantial advantages over a more conventional, individualized computing application. Specifically, at present it is rare that a goal or milestone of any importance is entrusted and reliant upon a single person. In fact, most goals and objectives can be achieved only through the participation of a multiplicity of individuals and systems, each serving a specified role or roles in the process. Consequently, to provide computing tools designed for use only by one of the individuals in the process can be short sighted and can ignore important potential contributions lying among the other individuals involved in the process. Also to provide computing tools designed for use only by one of the individuals in the process can create substantially more work for each individual in the process where each goal, milestone or system must be manually checked to view updates and the most current information. This creates a labor intensive environment whereby each goal, milestone or system exponentially increases an individual's work effort.
Personal information managers, project management systems and workflow management systems represent three such computing applications which attempt to manage a process leading to an objective, leveraging the participation of many individuals in the process and standalone systems. Project management systems provide means for an individual or a group to define and track project stages, milestones, objectives, and resources with strictly-specified interdependencies. In a traditional project management system, the phases of a project can be defined from start to finish and a timeline can be generated for the project. These systems are also used to coordinate resources and people, and to define and manage milestones. Utilizing the timeline, it can be determined when particular phases of the project have been completed and when a subsequently scheduled phase of the project can begin.
In a project management tool, to the extent that the timing of one phase of the project changes, the remaining project phases can be adjusted to accommodate the changed timing. Similarly, if the project requires the use of limited resources, and the allocation of one such resource changes, the remaining project phases that depend on that resource can be adjusted to accommodate the reduction of that resource, and re-allocated based upon changing needs. A major strength of project management systems is their maintenance of these kinds of strict interdependencies. In addition, in many project management systems, particular people can be assigned to particular phases of the project.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, project management tools do not account for the actual nature of a coordinated set of collaborative tasks conducted by people, such as an activity. An activity, unlike a typical project or workflow, refers to objects, actions, and persons in the real world, and provides a computerized representation of selected aspects of those objects, actions, and persons. As is well known, human work is notoriously situational and changeable. Humans discover new aspects of problems, develop new understandings of constraints, adapt to changed conditions, and inform their colleagues about these new circumstances.
Regarding this changeable, re-interpretable, shared human work, conventional project management tools have failed to provide a flexible, collaborative computerized representation of a coordinated set of collaborative tasks and incorporate the realtime, live communication that takes place outside of the project management tools. Rather, project management tools provide mere shared representations of project components in which one user typically specifies a fixed set of components and their interdependencies for use by other users. Furthermore, in project management systems, other users are relegated to the task of updating not the interdependencies, but merely the status of the specified components within those strict interdependencies. Accordingly, project management tools provide a strictly enforced sequence of actions and keep records of deviations therefrom.
Modem project management tools further neglect change management, communication management and document management. Change management, communication management and document management universally takes place outside of the project management tool, in different computing systems and using various ad hoc tools for communication. End users, in consequence, rely strictly upon “heavy lifting” (and heavy cognitive load in terms or things that they have to remember to update or check) to incorporate ad hoc communications and relevant documents into a project management tool. In this regard, “heavy lifting” refers to the manual cutting and pasting of relevant information into a project plan in the project management tool.